Medieval Eventide Song by Eugene Field
A parent calls a little child close for the night while an angel in white passes and sings of a distant blooming garden. The parent reflects that God sometimes gives childless people a little child, keeping the child with them if they love it but taking it away in mercy otherwise. Even loved children may be drawn away when God longs for them: singing angels beguile the playful “lamb,” embrace it, and carry it to the far-off garden. Fearing the loss of the child lent by God, the parent imagines using loving arms and music to protect the child from any angelic song of paradise, then urges the child again to lie close while the angel sings.
By Eugene Field · First published 1893 · Genre: Poetry, Religious Poetry, Lullaby · 288 words
First lines
Come hither, lyttel childe, and lie upon my breast to-night, / For yonder fares an angell yclad in raimaunt white, / And yonder sings ye angell as onely angells may, / And his songe ben of a garden that bloometh farre awaye.
To them that have no lyttel childe Godde sometimes sendeth down / A lyttel childe that ben a lyttel angell of his owne; / And if so bee they love that childe, he willeth it to staye, / But elsewise, in his mercie, he taketh it awaye.
And sometimes, though they love it, Godde yearneth for ye childe, / And sendeth angells singing, whereby it ben beguiled; / They fold their arms about ye lamb that croodleth at his play, / And beare him to ye garden that bloometh farre awaye.
Similar titles
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Genres
- Poetry — The work is a lyric poem composed in stanzas, using rhyme, repetition, musical language, and concentrated emotional imagery rather than narrative prose.
- Religious Poetry — Its central imagery and themes are explicitly Christian: God, angels, Paradise, mercy, and a heavenly garden shape the poem's understanding of childhood and death.
- Lullaby — The speaker tenderly addresses a child at bedtime, repeatedly inviting the child to lie upon the speaker's breast, while the soothing refrain and song imagery create a lullaby-like form.
- Elegiac Poetry — The poem dwells on the feared loss of a beloved child and imagines a child's death as angels carrying a lamb to Paradise, giving it an anticipatory elegiac mood.
Tags
parental love · fear of child loss · childhood · bedtime · mother and child · angel · God · heaven · paradise · afterlife · bereavement · infant mortality
What this Textopian page supports
Medieval Eventide Song is listed on Textopian as a poem by Eugene Field, dated 1893 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Eugene Field
- Date: 1893 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Religious Poetry, Lullaby, Elegiac Poetry, Devotional Poetry
- Length: 288 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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